Star witness takes stand in murder trial

John Nickerson

Updated 9:47 pm, Wednesday, March 6, 2013

STAMFORD -- With some drama Wednesday morning, the prosecution's star witness, Ashley McBride, took the stand in the Vonterrell Jamel "Grade A" George murder trial at state Superior Court in Stamford and, as she did before, identified Lamont McCrae as the person who stabbed George to death in Norwalk in June 2008.

Emotions were running high when, near the beginning of his direct examination of his murder witness, Senior Assistant State's Attorney Joseph Valdes asked McBride about Michael Robinson, the father of her young child.

McBride broke down crying as she explained Robinson was shot down on a South Norwalk street a little more than two years after George was killed, just two months after McCrae was arrested on the murder charge.

Police explained on the stand Tuesday that Robinson, or "Mizzy" as he was known on the street, had come forward months before his death saying he too was a witness to George's stabbing murder. In McCrae's arrest warrant affidavit, Robinson also identified "Lil Monty" McCrae as the one who stabbed George to death.

After the jury was excused in order to give McBride a chance to compose herself, she did not offer any evidence that Robinson was killed because he cooperated with police in their murder investigation, although that is what the prosecution seemed to imply.

McCrae, who was 16 at the time of the murder, went before a jury on the murder charge in May 2012, but that trial ended in a mistrial after evidence was wrongly given to the jury during their deliberations.

McCrae is also charged with intimidating a witness; he allegedly told another of the state's eyewitnesses -- who was incarcerated at the time with McCrae at the MacDougall-Walker Correctional Institution -- that he would end up like "Mizzy" if he testified against him.

That witness, Michael Preston, 25, took the stand Tuesday, but was forced to admit he waited almost three years to come forward to tell prosecutors he witnessed the killing. But, by that time, Preston had racked up multiple robbery charges as well as a felony gun possession and assault charge and he admitted part of his motivation for coming forward was to lessen his prison time. Still, he was offered a five year prison sentence in return for a guilty plea to robbery and violation of probation charges while agreeing to testify truthfully at trial.

McBride, who Valdes worried would be a no-show Wednesday after she ignored a subpoena to testify Tuesday, said she and some friends from Washington Village went to the South China restaurant to get some food just before 11 p.m. on June 13, 2008.

While waiting outside the restaurant, a group of young men converged on the sidewalk. There, she saw McCrae, whom she knew from the neighborhood.

"Everybody (shook hands) and I seen Monty come through the crowd and start doing like hand gestures, like toward Jamel. He was punching him, or something like that ... After that happened, everybody started fighting and that's when I saw Jamel like holding his stomach and I saw the blood on his shirt and that's when I realized he got stabbed, or whatever."

She then saw a man pull out a gun and start shooting and she and her friends ran away.

Police say George, who had a semiautomatic gun, got to his feet and chased McCrae down the street firing at least one shot.

He turned the corner onto Burritt Avenue and fell down with his torso on the street and legs on the sidewalk. He was pronounced dead soon after at Norwalk Hospital.

Police found one live bullet and one spent shell casing around where George was stabbed. They found George's loaded gun, which had been hidden by a female friend before police arrived, next to a nearby stone wall.

McBride said at the time she had a 6-month old daughter and was scared and did not go to police. But she said they came to her the next day and she told them she witnessed the killing and gave a description of the man who stabbed George.

But under cross-examination by McCrae's attorney David Bothwell, McBride was forced to admit she could not pick McCrae out, even though police showed her a picture of him in a photo line up two weeks after the stabbing.

Sgt. James Belmont testified earlier in the week that McBride was "adamant" none of the eight men in the photo array he showed her in early July 2008 was the killer, even though McCrae's picture was in it.

It wasn't until two years later, in July 2010, when police came back to her and showed her the exact same picture of McCrae in a new photo line-up that she picked McCrae out and positively identified him as the killer.

When Bothwell asked why she didn't pick McCrae out two weeks after the murder, McBride said she was tired at the time.

Valdes said he will call a thoracic surgeon as his last witness Thursday morning before resting the state's case.